


Cold-Blooded

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Snuggling Is Always Weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: Standard wow-we-need-to-cuddle-to-conserve-body-heat fic.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, not that it's super necessary to the plot-lessness of this fic, but this is kinda canon divergent in that there was no party, so no kiss, also no... darling-being-carted-away, because youch.

It’s past two in the morning and the glittering snow seems to go on forever in every direction.  Yawning loudly, Wynonna drags her feet up until she’s curled, awkwardly but comfortably, in the passenger seat.  Though she aches to close her eyes and _sleep_ —how many hours has she been up now?—she feels her gaze pulled towards Dolls, face oddly-lit by the gauges on the dash.  He’s been up even longer than she has, she knows, and he’s _got_ to be just as exhausted, but it doesn’t show.  She’ll be impressed later.  For now, she dozes.  There’s no _way_ she’s gonna sleep more fully, but even shutting her eyes is a relief.  She’s not sure how long she stays like that before she’s startled awake by _something_ rattling, then knocking, then the SUV shudders and dies.

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” Dolls hisses in disbelief.

She doesn’t immediately open her eyes because this is _bad_ but if she’s pretending to be sleeping at least she won’t have to deal with it.  When she does peek over, he’s got his forehead pressed against the steering wheel.  “I’m gonna take a wild stab and say you don’t have roadside,” she mumbles groggily.

He doesn’t answer her as he cranks the ignition to be met with painful clicks.  After a couple more tries which, like, she’s not an expert by any means but they _can’t_ be good for the engine, he groans, defeated, “Purgatory is still, like, _thirty_ miles away.”

“Well, shit,” she sighs.  Stretching and shuffling, she searches around for her phone, which should have been plugged in, should be easy to find just by tracing the cord but no!  That would be too simple.  “Shit,” she repeats, dragging it out in dismay when she _does_ find her nearly-dead phone.  Man, he’s gonna be _so_ upset with her, _especially_ if he can’t get the SUV running again, and he’s gonna give her that look, like he’s about to tell her he’s not mad, just disappointed.  She _hates_ that look—even if it _is_ 100% pure Hot Dad™.

Grumbling, Dolls swings back into the driver’s seat and whispers, “Come on, baby,” before turning the key.  The lights flicker and the engine warbles for a second before giving out on him.  He glares straight ahead for a long time without saying a word.

“So,” she says cautiously, “More bad news—my phone’s about to die.”

There it is!  The _look_.

“I thought it was plugged in!”

“You and me both,” she mutters.  After a beat, she continues as reassuringly as she can, “I’ll call Waverly.  Not like we’re going anywhere tonight.”  She doesn’t wait for a response, just hops out, partially because she can’t handle the waves of judgement rolling off him but also because she needs to march around anxiously for a few minutes.  At 3% battery, she’s pushing it kind of a lot trying to call her sister, jams as much information as she can about where they are—and that her phone is dying—into a voicemail before it beeps and goes black.  She paces around a little more, right on the edge of the shoulder, until Dolls stops her and tells her they need to get the thing out of the middle of the road.  She helps, grudgingly, after commenting that she’d almost rather be hit by oncoming traffic and not getting any sort of reaction.  Once they’ve got the SUV mostly off the road, they hover outside for another minute. 

As she starts to climb back in, he shakes his head, “Back seat, I’ve only got one blanket.”

Of _course_ he does.  The blanket’s heavy but more like steel wool than anything she’d prefer to have on her body.  It’s not much warmer inside the SUV than it had been outside—they let all the air out moving it—but maybe she’s just _used_ to the cold because it’s barely fazing her.  Over the next _maybe_ twenty minutes, Dolls’ shivering goes from “reasonable and unobtrusive” to “probably going to break into a thousand tiny pieces at any moment.”

“Are you…” she starts.

“I’m fine,” he grunts.

For another minute or two, she pretends she doesn’t know he’s a big fat liar, but she can hear his teeth chattering.  Finally, she mumbles, “Don’t make this weird, okay?”  Before he can ask, she climbs across his lap, settling flush to his chest and only jumping a little when his arms slip under her jacket.  His hands feel like ice through her shirt.  It takes a long time for him to stop shuddering, and she feels every shake _intimately_ in a way she’s neither accustomed to or comfortable with, if she’s honest.  After a while, she convinces herself somehow that being silent while straddling her boss’s lap makes it more awkward.  “This is _so_ not how I imagined I’d get you under me,” she sighs.

“ _You_ said not to make it weird,” he huffs.  There’s a silence that’s almost thoughtful before, “This is an HR nightmare.”

Something about it is so unexpected—maybe it’s just that him cracking jokes is still so unexpected—that it draws makes her laugh, big and loud until her gut aches.  She pulls back just a little, and his eyes and his grin are bright.  There’s a rush of _something_ that she doesn’t really want to think about too much, so she nudges her face into the crook of his neck, snickering at his hiss when her cold nose brushes his skin.  “Well, like, I need you alive and not frost-bitten, so…”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he murmurs into her hair.

“Yeah, well, shut the fuck up,” she smirks with an uncomfortable wriggle.

“There she is,” he laughs warmly.

“Don’t think I won’t let you freeze out of spite,” she warns.  “’Cause I totally will.”

“No, you won’t,” he says, so seriously that it renders her completely speechless.  She doesn’t have a damn thing to say to that.  “Go to sleep, Earp.”

“Funny.”  Funny because this is _way_ too weird, funny because the weird part is she’s inappropriately turned on, funny because she’s definitely _not_ gonna sleep.  Except, as time passes, he stops shivering and any urgency bleeds out of her, and she only got a little nap, anyway.  And this wouldn’t be the _most_ uncomfortable position she’s ever slept in.  She wants to crack a joke, but she’s having an embarrassingly hard time focusing past the way she can feel every breath he takes all through her.  Damn.

Still, she must sleep because a series of loud raps makes her jump awake and she’s immediately aware of two things—she and Dolls have managed to stay wrapped up in one another, and Nicole is grinning at them like it’s Christmas morning and her birthday all at once.  Not quite awake enough to be properly mortified, Wynonna slaps weakly at Dolls’ chest even as she’s slipping off his lap and pushing out of the SUV.  Her feet are asleep and she stumbles a little when they hit pavement.

“Not a word,” she grumbles, rubbing her eyes.  Unsurprisingly, Nicole’s smile only gets wider as Dolls follows her out.  “It was a totally necessary life-saving measure, dude’s, like, cold-blooded,” she insists, almost missing the weird look he tosses her.  This only makes her start laughing and Wynonna huffs haughtily, “He could have _died_ , I don’t deserve this.”

For a grand total of two minutes, she leans against the icy driver’s door while they peer under the hood before she gets bored and wanders to the truck parked almost nose-to-nose to the SUV—Nicole’s _actual_ vehicle, which she never drives.  (She’s never actually said it out loud, but Wynonna is absolutely certain that it’s because she thinks the cruiser makes her look sexy.)  Her sister’s in the front seat smirking at her phone as she hops in the back, sighing at the warmth of a functioning heater.

Craning over Waverly’s shoulder, she scowls, “I hate your girlfriend.”  Of _course_ she took a picture before waking them up—and, grudgingly, Wynonna can admit she’d’ve done the same.  “Thanks for coming for us, he woulda made me walk.”

Wave tosses her a suspicious look but, much to her surprise, stays mostly silent and opts to play Candy Crush while they wait.  She’s disgustingly far along, so Wynonna is distracted by idle jealousy.  Eventually, Dolls taps on the window, asking when she rolls it down, “You riding with me?”

“I _guess_ ,” she sighs dramatically. 

As he drives, Nicole follows “just in case.”  If he notices her silence, it’s not enough to raise any questions.  And mostly it’s nothing—she’s still tired, exhausted in the too-warm cab.  There’s also a need there, deep down, too big to put a name to because it’s not just _lust_ she feels because she’s almost totally used to that.  He _does_ seem to notice that she keeps glancing over at him (like _he’s_ got the answer to the question she doesn’t even know how to word), eventually sighing, “What?” when he catches her for about the twelfth time.

_“Nothing_ ,” she responds quickly.  For the rest of the drive, she stares resolutely through the window.  Mostly.

When they get to the homestead, that big frightening thing she’s been trying to work out isn’t any less tangled and confusing.  They stay in the SUV for a couple more minutes; Nicole’s stopped trailing them, she saw them to the mailbox but no further. 

After a few long minutes, Wynonna sighs heavily, resigned.  “Come inside,” she offers quietly.  He stares at her like she’s growing another head.  “You didn’t get any more sleep than I did, and it’s lucky you didn’t doze off and run us into a ditch on the way here.  Come inside.”

“I’m fine to go back to my place,” he grumbles pointedly even as he follows her inside.

“Famous last words,” she teases, giving him a small smirk.  “C’mon,” she nods and waves him through the front door.

Even though it doesn’t get used—because she still definitely sleeps on the couch, can’t feel at ease in there—she keeps her bedroom clean-ish.  Once she’d cleaned out the layers of dust and dead bugs and debris, it had just felt so weirdly fluttery-light.  Waves sometimes asks if she wants to move the bed out into the living room, teases her a little, but she doesn’t touch any harder on that point.  She seems to get it, mostly, but they don’t talk about it.  So, “her” room is where she takes him because it’s just a glorified guest room that she only goes into to grab a change of clothes, and she feels him give her a funny sort of look that she doesn’t really _want_ to acknowledge.

“I’m not taking your bed,” he finally says.

“Oh, c’mon, the sheets are clean and _everything_ ,” she replies quickly, smile too-sharp.  When it doesn’t look like he’s gonna move, she shoves his shoulders and marches him over to the bed, muttering, “Dude, you’re tired and you’re cold, just get some sleep and stop bitching.”

“I wasn’t _bitching_ ,” he counters.  He whips around so quickly she almost runs into his chest, and she watches almost dazedly as he shrugs out of his coat and nearly misses his offer to join him.

But she totally _doesn’t_ miss it and her brain shorts out a little.  “Uh—um, what?”

“You’re cold, you’re tired, get in bed,” he orders gently, low and on the edge of laughter.

“Not that I wouldn’t be _thrilled_ , but what happened to ‘HR nightmare?’” she asks only a little suspiciously.

“Listen, if you don’t—” 

She cuts him off, slamming her lips into his.  He freezes, and she yanks back and whispers in a rush, “I feel like I may have misread this whole situation.”

Just as she’s backing away, he snags her hand, “Wait.”  He pauses just long enough for her to feel like she can’t breathe before stepping closer, as close as he can be without touching her anywhere but his loose grip on her fingers.  There’s a couple seconds that feel like forever where their eyes are locked, and she feels a little unreal and a whole lot antsy, but the moment’s so delicate she can’t bring herself to do anything but _wait._  

When he _does_ kiss her, it’s a slow brush, gentle enough to almost be ticklish, but it feels like letting out a breath she’s held too long.  She feels his fingers brush over her neck, burying into her hair.  Hands fisted in the front of his sweater, she pulls him in harder, needs more, sighs when he echoes her grip.  It takes a long time to realize he’s softening the kiss in small ways, yielding when she pushes too hard, shifting back to breathe when it grows too frenzied.  She’s not sure what to do with that, but it makes something warm swell in her.

The moment _should_ be ruined when he yawns right in her face, but she can’t even pretend to be offended.

“Yep,” she agrees, bobbing her head and smiling in spite of herself.  She ducks out of the room to brush her teeth and throw on a pair of mostly-clean shorts.  He’s made himself at home in the bed when she gets back, self-consciously locking the door behind her back.  Just before she crawls under the covers, a shiver of anxiety ripples through her gut which she has to remind herself is _ridiculous_ , she has now literally slept _on top of him_.  It mostly disappears when he automatically wraps around her.  “I never imagined you being so weirdly cuddly,” she remarks, wriggling until she’s snug against his chest.

“I’m cold,” he murmurs defensively, brushing his chilly fingers over her thigh for good measure.

“Ass!” she gasps, unable to snatch away and uncharacteristically unwilling to kick him.  She must like him a _lot_.  “I see what this was.  You only wanted me in here for my body heat.  Unbelievable.”

“Just go to _sleep_ , Earp,” he orders, tone undercut when he grabs her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! It's kind of a mess and a lot self-indulgent (that's my secret, Cap...) but I had to do the thing. Umm, feel free to come by my [Tumblr](http://johnisntevendead.tumblr.com) and talk to me!


End file.
